St Francisco Coll y Guitart was born on 18 May 1812 in the small village
of Gombreny, in the Diocese of Vic, Catalonia. He was the 10th and last child
of a wool carder.

At the age of 10 he was sent to the Seminary in Vic in 1823. He completed his
studies in 1830 and that same year entered the Convent of the Order of
Preachers in Gerona, founded only about 35 years after St Dominic de Guzman's
death. He made his solemn profession and received the Diaconate in 1831.

Contemporaries of Fr Coll testify that he always behaved as a man of God and
led an exemplary life. In 1835 religious orders in Spain were forcibly
suppressed and Friar Francisco Coll, was obliged to abandon his convent and
become a secularized Dominican. He was nevertheless ordained a priest on 28 May
1836 despite the risks involved.

Indeed, in spite of being unable because of the new anti-clerical laws to live
in his convent or to wear his habit, he remained a Dominican all his life in
all that he was and all that he did. Soon after his ordination Francisco
offered his services to his Bishop and for 40 years exercised his ministry as
an itinerant missionary in the parishes of northeast Spain. Impelled by an
irresistible force, he started to preach as a new apostle, "the apostle of
modern times". Like the Founder of his Order, he received no stipend nor would
he accept donations; he was a preacher of popular missions. He prayed for long
hours, studied and dedicated a great deal of time to preparing sermons for
preaching the missions. He believed in the efficacy of collaboration and gave
spiritual exercises to the priests in the region. Thus he collaborated with
diocesan priests, Jesuits, Claretians, Augustinians and fellow Dominicans. With
his friend, St Anthony Mary Claret, he founded the "Apostolic Fellowship" for
evangelization in 1846.

He preached to cloistered nuns and prisoners, visited the sick and imparted
catechesis to children, always encouraging the devotion to the Virgin Mary.

His complete trust in God and his apostolic zeal motivated him to gather a
group of young women who had already chosen to follow Jesus' call. In 1850 he
was appointed Director of the Secular Order of Dominican Tertiaries, which
enabled him to found the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of the Anunciata
in 1856 to solve the problem of the Christian formation of girls, then
considered inferior to boys.

When Fr Coll died, according to the Congregation he founded, there were already
300 sisters and 50 communities dedicated to the Christian education of children,
mainly girls. Today the Congregation has about 1,039 members in Europe,
America, Africa and Asia.

Fr Coll y Guitart lost his sight and then his mental faculties and was cared
for by the nuns of his Congregation. He died in Vic on 2 April 1875 at the age
of 62. His body was exposed in the chapel of his religious and they buried him
in the local cemetery. His mortal remains were later translated to the chapel
of the Mother House.

John Paul II beatified him on 29 April 1979. In his Homily for Fr Coll's
Beatification, the Pope described him as "a transmitter of faith, a sower of
hope, a preacher of love, peace and reconciliation among those whom passions,
war and hatred keep divided", and "a real man of God", a "man of prayer", who
made his priestly and religious identity a source of inspiration, with the
words, "I am a religious" constantly on his lips.